By the N2K CyberWire staff
Top stories.
- NVIDIA CEO resigns following reports of an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
- France attributes refrigeration cyberattacks to Iran.
- Maersk investigates a data breach.
- Patch Tuesday notes: Microsoft patches an Outlook zero-day.
- Former FBI official pleads guilty to stealing cryptocurrency.
NVIDIA CEO resigns following reports of an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
The New York Times reports that US intelligence believes that Alice Huang, a Chinese business executive who had an affair with NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang (no relation), is working directly for China’s Ministry of State Security. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a memo earlier this year that warned the Trump administration that Jensen Huang was in a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.
Alice Huang worked for a Singapore-based company that buys NVIDIA’s chips, and she was under investigation for smuggling the chips into China. The Times says she was recruited by the MSS to gather information on American AI chips and attempt to push for NVIDIA to make its chips available in China.
Jensen Huang on Thursday resigned from his role as CEO and stepped down from the board following reports of additional affairs with subordinates at Nvidia. NBC reports that Nvidia's independent directors will continue the investigation into Huang despite his resignation. Huang also confirmed that he will testify before Congress sometime before Thanksgiving, according to TechCrunch.
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France attributes refrigeration cyberattacks to Iran.
France has blamed a recent spate of cyberattacks against industrial refrigeration systems on Iran, the Wall Street Journal reports. The attacks hit more than 700 supermarkets across France, raising temperatures and spoiling tens of millions of dollars' worth of food. The hackers also attempted to destroy blood supplies at a French blood bank, and similar attacks hit supermarkets in other European countries last week.
French officials attributed the hacks to the Shahid Kaveh offensive cyber unit, which is associated with the Electronic and Cyber Warfare Command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Paris prosecutor's office is seeking international arrest warrants for the leaders of Shahid Kaveh.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said at a G-7 meeting that Tehran would face retribution for the attacks, adding, "This is the first large-scale cyberattack carried out for the purpose of sabotage on national territory, and it constitutes a major threat to the nation’s interests and the security of the French people."
US authorities are also investigating the attack campaign and have said the hacks bear the hallmarks of past Iranian cyberattacks, but the US hasn't made an official attribution.
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Maersk investigates a data breach.
Danish shipping giant Maersk is investigating a data breach affecting one of its "local legacy systems from a previous acquisition," Infosecurity Magazine reports. The company said in a statement, "Our findings so far strongly suggest no sensitive data has been disclosed. The incident is isolated to a local system, and we have found no indication that there has been any impact on other Maersk systems or customer and partner systems that connect to Maersk through integrations such as APIs and EDI [electronic data interchange]. We do not anticipate disruption to operations for customers at this time, and customers can continue to use Maersk platforms to book and manage their shipments as usual."
BleepingComputer notes that the WhiteArmor ransomware gang listed Maersk on its leak site over the weekend, demanding a ransom payment of $5 million. The gang claims to have stolen around 100 GB of data from Maersk's OCF/LF Logistics platform, which the shipping firm acquired in 2022.
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Patch Tuesday notes: Microsoft patches an Outlook zero-day.
Microsoft on Tuesday issued patches for 1,094 flaws, including an actively exploited spoofing vulnerability in Outlook, KrebsOnSecurity reports. The Outlook flaw (CVE-2026-124194) has a severity rating of "Moderate," and can be exploited via a specially crafted message file. Microsoft states, "Opening the file could cause Outlook to connect to an attacker-controlled network location without displaying the usual external-content warning, potentially disclosing authentication information that could be used to impersonate the user."
Fortinet published 89 advisories resolving nearly a hundred flaws, including seventeen critical issues across products like FortiMail, FortiOS, and FortiClient, SecurityWeek reports. SecurityWeek also has a summary of patches issued by Asus, Zoom, Chrome, and Firefox.
Former FBI official pleads guilty to stealing cryptocurrency.
A senior FBI official has admitted to stealing $2.4 million worth of cryptocurrency from wallets controlled by criminals and nation-state threat actors, the Record reports. 37-year-old Patrick Steven Yaroch worked as a Supervisory Special Agent within the Bureau’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, focusing on an unnamed nation-state. The Justice Department says Yaroch used the funds to pay off his debts, then attempted to buy a vineyard in Portugal.
Yaroch pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering and faces up to 20 years in prison.
